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A  CONCERTED  MOVEMENT 
OF  THE  RAILWAYS 


BY 

LOGAN  G.  Mcpherson 


REPRINTED  FROM  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 
FOR  JANUARY,  1913 


NEW  YORK 
HE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW  PUBLISHING  CO. 


Copyright,  1912,  by 
The  North  American  Review  Publishiug  Co 


A   CONCERTED  MOVEMENT   OF   THE 
RAILWAYS 


BY  LOGAN   G.    McPHEESON 


Although  agreements  among  the  railways  have  not  met 
with  favor  in  this  country,  very  nearly  all  of  the  principal 
railway  companies  entered  into  a  movement  somewhat  over 
two  years  ago  that  is  not  likely  to  meet  with  popular  con- 
demnation. This  concerted  action  will  be  the  better  under- 
stood through  a  recountal  of  the  development  which  led  to  it. 

In  the  light  of  popular  attitude  toward  them,  the  history 
of  the  railroads  of  the  United  States  is  of  a  series  of  fairly 
well-defined  periods.  When  the  application  of  steam  as 
motive  power  on  roads  of  rail  was  first  undertaken  there 
was  the  incredulity  and  distrust  that  greet  radical  and  far- 
reaching  innovation.  When  the  practicability  of  the  steam 
railway  had  been  demonstrated  there  was  a  railway-building 
mania.  Pretty  much  everybody  who  had  money  or  who  could 
rake  and  scrape  money  together,  and  towns,  cities,  and 
States,  put  money  into  railway  projects.  There  ensued  an 
over-building  which  was  a  large  factor  in  bringing  about  the 
panic  of  1857.  During  the  Civil  War  the  usefulness  of 
through  routes,  constituted  of  the  connected  lines  of  two 
or  more  railroads,  became  manifest.  After  the  war  there 
was  a  renewed  stimulus  to  railway  construction,  especially 
in  the  Middle  West.  Men  of  rugged  force  utilized  in  build- 
ing railroads  the  labor  of  thousands  of  those  whom  the  dis- 
banding of  the  armies  had  left  without  vocation,  as  Napoleon 
three  generations  before  had  utilized  the  waste  labor  of 
Europe  in  building  the  roads  across  the  Alps.  Men  of  grasp 
who  perceived  the  country's  future  transformed  short  local 
railroads  into  through  lines  and  coined  their  foresight  into 
dollars.  In  many  cases  the  means  employed  were  sub- 
ordinate to  the  end  attained.  There  were  vast  opportuni- 
ties not  only  for  men  of  affairs  properly  so  designated,  but 

25719.'5 


2  ;MOFE>MBNT    Oi^-THE    EAILWAYS 

also  for  the  speculative  promoter  and  the  financial  manipu- 
lator, and  therefore  this  was  the  heyday  of  the  railway 
buccaneer.  Excessive  construction  and  speculation  again 
helped  to  bring  about  a  panic,  that  of  1873.  After  it  had 
run  its  course,  railway-building  again  outstripped  any  im- 
mediate need. 

As  railways  had  been  built  in  advance  of  traffic  there  arose 
an  intense  competition  for  business.  This  was  the  period 
when  cut  rates,  rebates,  and  other  stealthy  devices  spread 
like  the  weeds  they  were.  There  were  discriminations  that 
the  railway  managers  believed  to  be  just.  The  truth  is  that 
they  arose  in  the  main  from  that  process  of  adjustment 
entailed  by  the  extensions  and  ramifications  of  the  channels 
of  trade,  an  adjustment  which  is  still  in  process.  Not  only 
did  discriminations  whether  justifiable  or  not  give  rise  to 
complaint,  but  there  was  discomfiture  because  of  the  loss  of 
large  amounts  that  had  been  invested  in  railroad  construc- 
tion, and  there  was  bitterness  of  feeling,  frequently  well 
founded,  against  promoters,  speculators,  and  manipulators. 
Wide-spread  agitation  led  to  the  enactment  of  the  Interstate 
Commerce  Act  in  1887,  which  has  been  followed  by  amend- 
ments giving  the  Interstate  Commerce  Commission  greater 
authority,  and  by  drastic  legislation  enacted  by  the  separate 
States  for  the  regulation  of  the  railways. 

During  the  past  generation  many  a  railway  manager  has 
said  that  there  ought  to  be  public  discussion  of  railway 
problems  by  railway  men  that  the  people  might  understand 
the  railway  attitude,  especially  in  situations  giving  rise  to 
contention,  and  the  reasons  for  that  attitude.  Virtually  all 
railway  managers  agreed  that  this  ought  to  be  done,  but  they 
were  absorbed  in  work  that  pressed  for  attention,  immersed 
in  immediate  practical  problems.  Largely  because  of  the 
lack  of  such  discussion,  misunderstanding  succeeded  mis- 
understanding. The  people  came  to  distrust  the  railways; 
the  railways  came  to  distrust  the  people. 

The  will  of  the  people  in  this  country  is  supreme,  and 
however  misguided  they  often  have  thought  it,  the  railway 
managers  have  found  that  it  has  come  in  greater  and  greater 
degree  to  assert  itself  in  railway  affairs.  Therefore,  it  was 
borne  in  upon  the  minds  of  railway  presidents  that  instead 
of  simply  agreeing  there  ought  to  be  discussion  with  the 
people,  it  was  high  time  discussion  began. 

It  took  the  enactment  of  the  Mann-Elkins  bill  in   1910 


MOVEMENT    OF    THE   RAILWAYS  3 

to  bring  the  railways  to  the  consideration  of  a  definite  pro- 
gramme. A  committee  of  six  railway  presidents  was  ap- 
pointed, and  this  committee  engaged  in  analysis  and  intro- 
spection. They  quite  understood  that  the  railways  were 
unpopular  with  very  nearly  the  whole  people.  They  re- 
fleeted,  however,  that  the  whole  people  do  not  come  directly 
into  relation  with  the  railways.  Except  in  populous  centers 
with  suburban  traffic,  but  a  small  fraction  of  the  people  take 
railway  journeys  with  any  frequency,  and  a  still  smaller 
fraction  are  immediate  shippers  or  receivers  of  freight  or 
have  first-hand  knowledge  of  freight  rates. 

They  reflected  that  a  man  is  judged  in  the  community  by 
the  things  which  he  does,  that  if  he  is  gruff  and  ungracious 
in  daily  intercourse  and  is  not  a  good  neighbor  he  is  apt 
to  be  disliked,  no  matter  how  essentially  upright  he  may  be. 
They  reflected  that  so  also  it  must  be  with  a  railway,  and 
thereupon  recommended  that  each  railway  be  a  good  neigh- 
bor in  every  community  along  its  lines,  that  planks  in  station 
platforms  be  nailed  down  securely,  that  approaches  to 
freight  stations  be  kept  in  good  order,  that  details  of  service 
be  kept  as  nearly  as  possible  above  reasonable  criticism,  that 
the  local  agent  take  an  interest  in  the  affairs  of  the  town, 
that  all  employees  be  courteous  in  their  intercourse  with 
patrons.  One  of  these  railway  presidents,  when  vice-presi- 
dent of  a  Western  road,  had  assigned  to  an  officer  of  intelli- 
gence and  adequate  authority  the  duty  of  going  in  person  to 
any  community  where  a  complaint  arose,  of  investigating, 
applying  a  remedy  if  there  were  a  real  grievance,  or  of 
explaining  the  reasons  for  the  attitude  of  the  railway  when 
it  did  not  think  the  situation  ought  to  be  changed.  This 
procedure  gave  excellent  results,  and  he  has  followed  it 
*  with  increasing  success  on  the  trunk-line  of  which  he  is  now 
president.  The  committee  recommended  to  all  of  their  col- 
leagues that  they  do  likewise. 

These  six  railway  presidents  reflected  that  in  the  absence 
of  accurate  information  people  are  likely  to  believe  that 
which  is  inaccurate  if  it  is  plausibly  put  before  them;  that 
the  railways  had  permitted  all  sorts  of  accusations  to  be 
made  against  them  in  public  speeches  and  in  the  public 
prints,  usually  without  making  an  effort  to  reply,  and 
that  the  cumulative  effect  of  these  accusations  had  been 
considerable.  Therefore,  they  recommended  that  whenever 
an  unjust  accusation  or  unfounded  reflection  appeared  in  a 


4  MOVEMENT    OF   THE   EAILWAYS 

newspaper  or  emanated  from  a  source  of  influence  in  any 
community  along  the  lines  of  a  railway,  it  spare  neither 
time,  trouble,  nor  expense  in  bringing  the  falsity  of  the 
accusation  home  to  the  source  of  utterance,  to  the  end  that 
a  retraction  be  secured,  or  in  any  event  a  greater  degree  of 
care  be  exercised  thereafter. 

It  was  borne  in  upon  these  six  railway  presidents  that  the 
course  of  railway  administration  for  many  years  had  tended 
more  and  more  to  remove  the  managing  officers  from  con- 
tact with  the  peoi^le;  that  the  formation  of  the  great  com- 
panies with  headquarters  in  large  cities  more  or  less  remote 
from  the  regions  traversed  by  their  lines  had  centralized  the 
management  in  the  hands  of  executive  officers ;  that  although 
the  most  of  these  men  are,  and  by  the  very  nature  of  their 
duties  must  be,  earnest,  well  disposed,  upright,  they  are  not 
infrequently  regarded  as  ogres  by  the  public  at  large.  An 
editor  of  a  newspaper  in  southern  Michigan  thirty  years  ago 
once  said  that  when  his  town  was  a  station  on  a  local  rail- 
way every  editor  along  the  line  Imew  every  officer  of  that 
railway;  that  even  when  there  was  not  mutual  agreement, 
there  was  the  immediate  discussion  that  brought  out  the 
respective  viewpoints.  When  the  local  railway  was  ab- 
sorbed by  a  larger  company,  and  the  administrative  head- 
quarters were  removed  to  a  great  center,  where  the  officers 
became  more  and  more  absorbed  in  their  duties  of  direction 
and  management,  this  personal  contact  waned  and  vanished. 
Then  it  came  about  that  the  only  intercourse  between  the 
newspapers  along  the  line  and  the  railroad  was  between  the 
local  station  agent  and  the  local  reporter.  The  local  station 
agent,  frequently  without  information  and  often  forbidden 
to  disclose  what  he  possessed,  became  distrustful  of  the 
reporter.  The  reporter,  bound  to  '*  get  a  story,''  published 
rumors  and  became  distrustful  of  the  station  agent. 

Therefore,  it  was  recommended  that  officers  of  the  rail- 
way companies  from  the  president  down  mingle  in  public 
gatherings  and  accept  invitations  to  make  public  addresses; 
that  they  take  every  opportunity  when  in  the  different  com- 
munities served  by  their  lines  to  become  acquainted  and  have 
face-to-face  discussion  with  the  citizens ;  that  they  cultivate 
and  have  their  local  representatives  cultivate  such  cordial 
intercourse  with  the  newspaper  editors  and  others  as  would 
lead  to  mutual  discussion  and  mutual  understanding  of  mat- 
ters in  interest. 


MOVEMENT    OF   THE   RAILWAYS  5 

It  was  hoped  that  action  along  the  lines  of  the  foregoing 
recommendations  would  tend  to  bring  about  a  certain  meas- 
ure of  neighborly  good-will.  But  these  six  railway  presi- 
dents were  also  obliged  to  reflect  that  because  of  the  network 
of  through  routes  and  the  relation  of  this  ramifying  network 
to  the  industry  and  commerce  of  the  whole  country,  and 
because  of  a  certain  tendency  of  the  regulating  powers  to 
regard  the  railways  from  the  standpoint  of  their  service  to 
the  public  collectively  rather  than  from  that  of  their  ex- 
istence as  separate  corporate  entities,  it  was  necessary  that 
the  railways  at  all  times  be  in  possession  of  information  in 
regard  to  the  broader  questions  of  common  interest  to  them 
enabling  intelligent  discussion  of  the  facts  that  would  g*uide 
them  in  avoiding  error.  Eecognizing  that  adequate  an- 
alysis and  elucidation  of  the  various  factors  entering 
into  the  broader  questions  could  best  be  accomplished 
through  an  instrumentality  exclusively  devoted  to  their 
study,  this  committee  of  railway  presidents  established  the 
Bureau  of  Eailway  Economics  and  selected  Washington  as 
its  headquarters  because  of  the  accessibility  to  the  official 
reports  and  statistics  of  the  Interstate  Commerce  Commis- 
sion and  of  other  departments  and  bureaus  of  the  Federal 
Government.  It  was  decreed  that  the  work  of  the  bureau 
be  performed  in  the  spirit  of  the  economist,  that  its  re- 
searches be  impartial,  its  compilations  strictly  accurate,  and 
all  of  its  presentations  without  bias.  Indeed,  such  stipula- 
tion was  made  by  the  officers  of  the  bureau  before  accepting 
appointments  to  its  staff. 

Thus  has  been  outlined  the  programme  recommended  by 
the  committee  to  the  railway  presidents  of  the  United  States 
in  July,  1910.  There  is  now  to  be  considered  the  extent  to 
which  that  programme  was  adopted  and  carried  out  and 
what  the  results  have  been.  It  is  not  to  be  implied  that 
all  of  these  recommendations  indicated  a  change  in  the  policy 
that  had  been  pursued  by  various  railways  and  by  some 
of  them  for  many  years.  In  fact,  they  were  based  in  part  on 
the  success  attained  by  them.  It  is  beyond  question,  how- 
ever, that  these  recommendations  have  stimulated  the  rail- 
ways to  cultivate  in  greater  degree  cordial  relations  with  the 
patrons  of  their  lines  and  with  the  public  in  general.  Sev- 
eral of  the  companies,  especially  in  the  West,  where  the 
feeling  against  the  railways  had  become  embittered,  in- 
augurated  **  getting   acquainted  ''   trains.     The   heads    of 


6  MOVEMENT    OF   THE   EAILWAYS 

the  various  departments,  starting  from  tlie  headquarters 
offices  of  a  railway,  traversed  the  entire  system,  stopping 
at  the  principal  stations.  At  each  station  the  agent  had  been 
advised  in  advance  to  say  that  the  officers  would  be  glad 
to  see  as  many  of  the  citizens  as  might  care  to  make  their 
acquaintance  and  discuss  matters  of  mutual  interest.  The 
results  are  reported  to  have  far  exceeded  any  expectations. 
At  nearly  every  station  representative  citizens  awaited  the 
special  train.  Sometimes  a  meeting  was  held  in  the  railway 
station,  but  frequently  it  was  necessary  to  adjourn  to  a 
convenient  hall.  Everybody  was  introduced  to  everybody 
else,  and  the  railway  officers  would  ask  for  frank  statements 
of  any  complaints  that  might  be  entertained  against  the 
company.  Sometimes  genuine  grievances  were  disclosed. 
As  the  head  of  each  department  was  present,  there  was  not 
the  reference  from  one  officer  to  another  that  is  so  often  the 
fate  of  written  communication,  but  a  remedy  was  applied 
at  once  by  the  head  of  the  department  having  jurisdiction. 
Other  complaints  were  threshed  out  on  both  sides,  and  after 
a  statement  of  the  situation  from  the  railway's  standpoint 
many  a  supposed  grievance  was  found  to  the  satisfaction 
of  the  gathering  to  be  without  foundation.  These  **  getting 
acquainted  ''  trains  are  now  run  once  or  twice  a  year  by  the 
railways  which  inaugurated  them.  It  has  happened  that 
the  better  part  of  the  able-bodied  population  of  a  town  has 
met  such  a  train  at  the  station  with  a  brass  band.  In  other 
parts  of  the  country  railways  have  pursued  the  quieter  but 
none  the  less  effective  procedure  of  having  their  officers 
make  a  practice  of  calling  individually  upon  the  representa- 
tive citizens  of  the  various  communities  for  mutual  and 
candid  discussion. 

The  policy  of  refuting  unjust  accusations  and  proving 
the  falsity  of  unfounded  reflections  has  been  pursued 
with  like  success.  During  the  last  two  years  few,  if  any, 
attacks  upon  the  railways  in  general  have  appeared  in 
magazines  without  the  president  or  an  officer  of  one  or 
another  railway  requesting  the  editor  to  give  like  prominence 
to  a  refutation.  Usually  the  editor  has  complied  in  the 
spirit  of  fairness,  but  not  always.  Men  of  public  prominence 
who  have  attacked  the  railways  have  been  met  with  re- 
joinder. When  a  newspaper  has  published  an  article  un- 
justly prejudicial  to  a  railway  the  editor  has  been  called 
upon  in  person.    Convincement  that  he  has  been  in  error  not 


MOVEMENT    OF    THE   RAILWAYS  7 

infrequently  leads  to  retraction;  in  other  cases  space  has 
been  given  to  a  refutation  over  the  name  of  a  representa- 
tive of  the  railway  in  interest.  The  traffic  official  of  a  West- 
ern railway  to  whom  had  been  assigned  the  duty  of  thus 
replying  to  newspaper  attacks  upon  his  company  said  that 
at  the  beginning  this  work  occupied  the  greater  part  of  his 
time,  but  that  in  the  course  of  a  year  it  came  to  require 
very  little,  the  newspaper  editors  in  his  district  having  at- 
tained a  sense  of  responsibility  in  regard  to  what  was  said 
about  the  railways  which  they  had  never  had  before. 

These  recommendations  of  the  committee  of  six  railway 
presidents  have  been  so  carried  out  that  the  severe  criticism 
of  the  railways  in  general  that  were  rife  but  a  few  years 
ago  have  greatly  diminished  and  now  seldom  emanate  from 
responsible  sources.  Current  criticism  is,  as  a  rule,  at  this 
time  more  concrete,  directed  particularly  against  specific 
practices.  Such  criticism  pointing  out  directions  of  improve- 
ment ought  always  to  be  welcomed  by  the  railways. 

The  stimulus  toward  the  coming  of  the  railways  to  a 
keener  realization  of  their  duties  as  public  servants  has 
been  marked  by  the  organization  of  **  safety  committees  '* 
to  impress  upon  employees  that  feeling  of  personal  respon- 
sibility which  is  the  most  effective  safeguard  against  ac- 
cidents ;  and  of  *  *  efficiency  committees  ' '  to  scrutinize  opera- 
tion for  the  purpose  of  effecting  economies.  A  crusade  has 
been  inaugurated  against  that  trespassing  upon  railway 
right-of-way  which  is  the  cause  of  the  greater  number  of 
the  fatalities  reported  in  the  accident  bulletins  of  the  Inter- 
state Commerce  Commission.  There  has  also  been  a  re- 
newed and  extended  effort  toward  bringing  about  a  greater 
diversification  of  traffic  through  the  extension  of  industrial 
agencies  which  call  attention  to  available  sites  and  business 
opportunities ;  and  an  increasing  intensiveness  of  production 
has  been  furthered  by  the  running  of  demonstration  trains 
accompanied  by  lecturers,  who  explain  to  farmers  the  proc- 
esses whereby  greater  economy  and  increasing  efficiency  can 
be  attained  in  the  production  of  crops.  Many  railway  presi- 
dents and  other  officers  have  given  personal  time  and  effort 
toward  furthering  the  improvement  of  the  rural  high- 
ways. 

The  Bureau  of  Railway  Economics  has  found  a  steadily 
widening  field  of  acti\aty.  For  the  information  of  its  sub- 
scribers it  has  made  or  has  under  wav  analvses  of  such 


8  MOVEMENT    OF   THE   BAIL  WAYS 

propositions  as  the  parcel  post,  physical  valuation,  and  rail- 
way taxation.  For  use  before  the  Board  of  Arbitration  in 
the  recent  engineers'  controversy  it  made  exhaustive  com- 
pilations showing  the  effect  of  various  factors  in  wage  in- 
creases and  in  traffic  movement;  and  through  first-hand 
investigation  in  various  cities  secured  information  as  to  the 
actual  earnings  in  other  vocations  of  employees  whose  skill 
and  responsibility  are  comparable  with  that  of  the  engineers. 

This  bureau  is  continuously  engaged  in  a  line  of  studies 
designed  to  develop  information  as  to  the  broader  economic 
relations  of  the  railways.  Its  recent  bulletin,  entitled 
**  Comparison  of  Capital  Values — Agriculture,  Manufac- 
tures, and  the  Eailways,''  makes  clear  from  published  sta- 
tistics of  the  United  States  Government  that  the  capital 
value  of  railway  property  in  the  United  States  is  increasing 
less  than  half  as  fast  as  the  capital  values  of  either  the 
agricultural  or  manufacturing  industries  and  that  the  per- 
centage of  net  return  on  capital  in  manufactures  is  over 
twice  as  high  as  on  that  of  the  railways. 

This  bureau  is  making  a  comparison  of  the  railway  status 
in  the  United  States  with  that  in  the  principal  countries  of 
Europe,  and  of  this  two  sections  have  been  published.  The 
first  brings  out  that  in  proportion  to  population  the  United 
States  has  from  four  to  five  times  as  many  miles  of  line  as 
either  England,  France,  or  Germany ;  that  the  ton  miles  per 
inhabitant  are  seven  times  those  of  France,  while  the  freight 
revenues  per  mile  of  line  are  virtually  the  same;  and  four 
times  those  of  Germany,  while  the  freight  revenues  per 
mile  of  line  are  only  a  fraction  over  half  as  great.  The 
capitalization  per  mile  of  line  of  the  railways  of  the  United 
States  is  less  than  one-fifth  that  of  the  railways  of  England 
and  Wales,  less  than  half  that  of  the  railways  of  France, 
and  but  little  more  than  half  that  of  the  railways  of  Prussia- 
Hesse,  which  are  the  more  important  of  Germany. 

To  a  comparative  study  of  railway  wages  and  the  cost 
of  living  the  bureau  gave  extended  study  and  laborious 
compilation  which  resulted  in  its  being  able  to  announce,  on 
the  basis  of  official  statistics,  that  ^Mt  is  well  within  the 
truth  to  estimate  in  a  broad  and  general  way  that  while  the 
cost  of  living  of  a  railway  employee  in  the  United  States 
is  less  than  fifty  per  cent,  higher  than  that  of  a  correspond- 
ing employee  in  the  United  Kingdom  or  on  the  Continent,  his 
compensation  averages  over  twice  as  great. ' ' 


MOVEMENT   OF   THE   RAILWAYS     -        9 

Among  otber  studies  is  one  demonstrating  that  the  capi- 
talization per  mile  of  the  railways  of  Texas  is  less  than  half 
of  the  average  for  the  whole  United  States;  that  while  in 
1909  the  average  dividend  rate  on  the  total  railway  stock 
of  the  United  States  was  but  4.2  per  cent.,  this  was  more 
than  seventeen  times  as  great  as  the  average  dividend  on  the 
stock  of  the  Texas  railways. 

Another  study  discloses  that  if  account  be  taken  of  the 
capital  expenditures  on  the  Erie  Canal,  of  interest  charges, 
extraordinary  repairs,  and  depreciation,  in  addition  to  the 
charges  of  the  boatmen  for  hauling  traffic,  the  total  cost  of 
transportation  of  a  ton  of  freight  on  the  Erie  Canal  is  at  a 
higher  rate  per  mile  than  the  average  rate  per  ton  mile 
received  by  any  of  the  railways  parallel  to  it;  and  these 
railways,  of  course,  are  obliged  to  meet  their  capital  charges, 
repairs,  and  depreciation,  as  well  as  the  immediate  cost  of 
hauling  out  of  their  revenue  from  transportation. 

A  service  performed  by  this  bureau  is  the  publication  of 
a  monthly  summary  of  revenues  and  expenses  of  the  steam 
railways.  This  is  compiled  and  computed  from  the  reports 
made  by  the  railways  to  the  Interstate  Commerce  Commis- 
sion for  each  month.  These  returns  are  not  presented  by 
individual  roads  as  in  financial  reports  designed  mainly  for 
the  information  of  the  investor,  but  by  geographical  groups 
in  each  of  which  there  is  an  approximate  similarity  in  traffic 
conditions.  Thus  the  ebb  and  flow  of  receipts  and  of  ex- 
penses is  indicated  for  the  railways  of  the  East,  for  the 
railways  of  the  South,  and  for  the  railways  of  the  West. 
The  returns  are  given  not  only  in  aggregates  for  the  month, 
but  also  per  mile  of  line — the  proper  unit  of  measurement 
and  comparison.  When  it  is  understood,  for  example,  that 
during  the  record-breaking  month  of  August  the  net  oper- 
ating revenue  of  the  railways  as  a  whole,  which  is  that  pro- 
portion of  their  receipts  available  for  taxes,  rentals,  interest 
on  bonds,  appropriations  for  betterments,  and  dividends, 
averaged  only  $14.11  per  day,  which  is  but  $1.41  greater  fo^ 
each  mile  of  line  for  each  day  than  during  August,  1911,  it 
is  easily  comprehended  that  the  railways  as  a  whole  have  nd 
more  than  a  narrow  margin  of  profit.  When  it  is  remen*-' 
bered  that  throughout  1911  railway  managers  were  bitterly 
complaining  that  their  expenditures  did  not  leave  sufficierit 
margin  with  which  to  make  needed  betterments  and  attract 
the    capital    necessary    for    the    extensions    and    additions 


10     ''"k^  OF   THE   EAILWAYS 

requisite  to  handle  the  growing  traffic  of  the  country, 
verisimilitude  is  given  to  their  claim  that  even  the  increased 
traffic  of  this  year  does  not  solve  their  pressing  problems. 

These  are  but  a  few  examples  of  the  manner  in  which  the 
Bureau  of  Eailway  Economics  is  quietly  and  unobtrusively 
rendering  a  service  not  only  to  the  railways  but  to  the 
public.  As  originally  planned,  the  results  of  its  studies 
were  to  be  communicated  to  its  subscribers  for  such  use  as 
they  might  choose  to  make  of  them.  As  the  work  developed 
it  was  urged  by  many  newspaper  men  that  as  these  studies 
are  of  public  interest  they  ought  to  be  made  available  to 
the  newspaper  press.  After  repeated  urging,  the  bureau 
entered  upon  the  practice  of  sending  its  more  important 
bulletins  and  brief  summaries  thereof  to  editors  through- 
out the  United  States  ^*  for  their  information,  their  refer- 
ence, and  their  publication  if  they  so  desire.  * '  The  first  and 
foremost  aim  of  the  bureau  is  to  be  a  source  of  accurate  and 
authentic  information;  and  it  is  obtaining  recognition  as 
such  from  railway  commissioners,  from  educational  institu- 
tions, and  from  the  general  press. 

Not  the  least  important  service  rendered  by  the  bureau 
is  that  of  its  library.  Its  librarian  has  in  preparation  a 
complete  bibliography,  and  a  volume  entitled  Railway  Eco- 
nomics: A  Collective  Catalogue  of  Books  in  Fourteen  Ameri- 
can Libraries  has  already  been  published. 

It  remains  to  be  said  that  the  programme  recommended 
by  the  committee  of  six  railway  presidents  has  not  been 
carried  out  with  equal  vigor  by  all  of  the  railways.  Those 
who  have  been  earnest  and  continuous  in  the  procedure  re- 
port that  there  is  evidence  of  a  growing  mutual  good-will 
between  their  officers  and  the  people  of  the  communities 
served  by  their  lines,  of  an  atmosphere  in  which  points  of 
difference  can  be  discussed  and,  it  is  to  be  hoped,  adjusted 
without  the  acrimony  of  the  past. 

The  necessity  on  the  part  of  many  railways  to  observe 
the  most  rigid  economy  stands  in  the  way  of  their  incurring 
even  the  additional  expense  necessary  to  carry  out  such  a 
programme.  The  inertia  that  tends  to  pervade  large  organ- 
izations has  militated  against  energetic  action  on  the  part 
of  other  railways,  and  it  must  be  admitted  that  there  are 
still  a  few  railway  presidents  of  the  old  school  who  will  have 
nothing  to  do  with  such  innovation. 


TV    OF    GA'^ 


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